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Sitting there in front of the TV, you hear different information being beamed to your brain. Is this information true? Do you believe it? Do you even have a choice? Critical thinking strategies are designed to make us better consumers of information. Once you adapt them into your life, you won’t be just a zombie allowing everything to enter your mind unexamined, unquestioned and unfiltered. You’ll be a changed person.

How To Become a Critical Thinker:

1. Be skeptical, ask questions, and be willing to wonder
   1. Be curious about the puzzles of human behavior.
   2. Don’t always believe and accept everything you see for the first time.
   3. Ask the question “why?”, ask “What is the other side of this story?”, ask “What is being left out?”
2. Define the problem, and examine the definition of terms
   1. Indentify the issues in concrete terms. What is the true topic, what words are being used to describe the problem and do they have the same meaning for you as they do for me?
   2. In psychology: operational definitions
   3. Many times the vocabulary being used has different meanings to different people, make sure that you understand what the vocabulary means.
   4. Example: “Theory” in science is the closest you can get to a “fact”, but many people think “theory” is something unproven, unstable and full of holes.
3. Examine the evidence
   1. Presumption of desiring evidence. Do you want the evidence to be true because of some personal reason? Are you closing off your mind to anything contrary because you like the result?
   2. The goal is to have evidence or facts that are reliable and true. Hearsay or wishes can’t be used as evidence.
   3. One of the most important concepts in science is the idea of replication. If you are making a claim, somebody else should be able to do what you did and get the same results. If they do, then your claim stands, if they get different results your claim in false.

4. Be cautious in drawing conclusions from evidence
   1. Conclusions differs whether true experiment (cause and effect) or correlational (+,-)
   2. Many times you can’t get different results from the same experiment and some people some of the results and say that it’s a cause and effect relationship, but it is not. It’s more of a correlational relationship.
   3. For a cause and effect relationship to be true, the cause has to produce the effect 100% of the time.
   4. Example: Smoking does not have a cause and effect relationship with lung cancer because smoking does not cause lung cancer 100% of the time. There are people that smoke and never get lung cancer and there’s people that never smoke and get lung cancer.
5. Consider alternative explanations for research evidence
   1. Look for other influencing factors. What else might have been the cause of this? What is not being show, represented, repressed?
6. Examine biases and assumptions
   1. Both your own and those of others. What do I want to hear? What do you believe in? Do I automatically discount if it doesn’t agree with what I’ve learned before?
   2. Look for spins, filters, prejudices. Who is presenting the information? What is their background? Would they have any reason to have an agenda?
   3. Consider evidence that may contradict your beliefs. You don’t have to discard your own beliefs to consider or think about contradictory ideas. Maybe they will strengthen what you believe. Or maybe not. Wouldn’t you want to know if you were going through life believing something that is not true?
7. Avoid emotional reasoning as a substitute for rationality
   1. Feelings should not substitute for the careful appraisal of arguments and evidence. Many people feel emotionally attached to ideas and arguments that they were taught as children or at critical moments in their lives and are afraid to let go, or even consider anything else. They allow emotion to control their thinking and will not approach it with rational thinking. Don’t allow yourself to fall into this trap, know when to put your emotions aside for a moment and use your mind.
8. Don’t oversimplify or over-generalize
   1. Reject simplistic, either-or thinking. In 99.9% of all issues there is more than a pro and con, there are many variations and many variables. Consider this when you are presented with only two sides, which is over simplified.
   2. Look beyond obvious. Ask “What else can be true about this?” What else is being hidden or left out or covered over.
   3. “Shades of gray” – most of life comes in shades of gray. Many people want to tell you its either black or white, but that is simply not true. Learn to always see the other shades of any issue, idea or fact.
9. Tolerate uncertainty
   1. Settle on guiding beliefs, yet be willing to change those in the face of changing evidence. You might be at a time in your life where your beliefs are perfect for your situation, but when things change, be responsive, reevaluate what you believe and why you believe it, if the current beliefs still work keep them, if not upgrade them to something better.

Attitudes of a Critical Thinker

10. Critical thinking is hard work. Even Thomas Edison said that thinking is the hardest job on the planet, and critical thinking is up there. But critical thinking is important, it is what makes you human, makes you feel alive.
11. Errors provide valuable feedback. Sometimes error or mistakes tell you more about yourself or a problem that you are working on than if everything go smoothly.
12. Every major issue has multiple points of view. Going to war is good, going to war is bad. Abortion is good, abortion is bad. Democracy is good, democracy is bad.
13. Theories, traditions, beliefs must be understood completely before acceptance or rejection. If you are able to argue both sides of the issue and then take down an opposing issue, than you have come to a point where you full understand the issue. To be able to only talk about your side of the issue doesn’t prove that you know the issue fully.
14. There are no simplistic solutions to complex human problems. Most of human problems have multiple variables to them. You can’t just solve one variable and say that the entire problem is solved, that would be premature. Learn to look at problems as not just one cause and effect, but multiple variables, multiple causes contributing to one or more effects or results or problems.